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The Bitter Cry of Outcast London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2013

Anthony S. Wohl
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Abstract

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In the autumn of 1883 a small, anonymous penny pamphlet bearing the provocative title The Bitter Cry of Outcast London appeared in the London bookstores. Its impact was so immediate and cataclysmic that it must be considered one of the great pieces of Victorian reform literature. According to contemporary opinion the pamphlet provoked an “immense interest” in and “drew attention universally to the subject” of the dwellings of the working classes, and by the winter of 1883 it was unanimously agreed that urban slum conditions had “assumed the dimensions of a primary question” and had become “the subject of the day”. Alfred Spender, the editor of the Westminster Gazette, stated in 1913 that it was almost impossible to recapture “the sensation which such a pamphlet as ‘The Bitter Cry of Outcast London’ made when it was first produced”. Suddenly, almost overnight, it seemed, England awoke to the grim facts of the slums. “The revelations concerning ‘Outcast London’”, commented Reynolds Newspaper, “cause a tremendous sensation and thrill of horror through the land…” In January 1884 the Pall Mall Gazette wrote that The Bitter Cry had been echoing from one end of England to the other, and commented, ”We shall have to go back a long time to discover an agitation on any social question in England which has produced so prompt, so wide-spread, and, as we believe, so enduring an effect.” Two years after its publication it was reported that The Bitter Cry “rang through the length and breadth of the land. It touched the hearts of tens of thousands, and awoke deep feelings of indignation, pain, and sympathy in every direction.”

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , August 1968 , pp. 189 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1968

References

page 189 note 1 Yet, strangely, this pamphlet has received little attention from historians. Both Ashworth, W., The Genesis of Modern British Town Planning (London, 1954)Google Scholar and Barnes, H., The Slum. Its Story and Solution (London, 1931)Google Scholar ignore The Bitter Cry. Mrs H. Lynd mentions it in her England in the Eighteen Eighties (London, 1954), and K. Inglis makes excellent use of it in his Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (London, 1963).

page 189 note 2 The Malthusian, No 57, December, 1883.

page 189 note 3 Parliamentary Papers, 30 (1884–5), Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes. II. Minutes of Evidence, p. 103. Hereafter I will refer to this source as PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II. RCHWC I will refer to the First Report of the Commission.

page 189 note 4 Daily Telegraph, November 26, 1883, and ibid., October 31, 1883. Lancet on December 1, 1883 wrote, “The housing of the poor is the burning question of the hour” (p. 961).

page 189 note 5 Quoted in H. Barnett, Canon Barnett. His Life, Works, and Friends (London, 1919), p. 309.

page 189 note 6 Reynolds Newspaper, October 28, 1883.

page 190 note 1 Pall Mall Gazette, January 2, 1884, in a leader “The First Fruits of the ‘Bitter Cry’”.

page 190 note 2 “Light and Shade”. Pictures of London Life. A Sequel to “The Bitter Cry of Outcast London” (London, 1885), p. 1.

page 190 note 3 Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1889.

page 190 note 4 Rivington, F., A New Proposal for Providing Improved Dwellings for the Poor., (London, 1880), p. 1.Google Scholar

page 191 note 1 For a bibliography of this material with an excellent critical summary see Dyos, H.J., “The Slums of Victorian London”, in: Victorian Studies, XI, No 1 (09, 1967).Google Scholar See also: Glass, R., “Urban Sociology in Great Britain. A Trend Report”, in: Current Sociology, IV, No 4 (1955).Google Scholar

page 191 note 2 Dyos, p. 12.

page 191 note 3 See the titles in Dickens' periodicals listed in Dyos, p. 16. In addition see Household Words, May 25,1850, p. 199; ibid., June 22, 1850, p. 297. Typical of the rather romantic treatment is “Down Whitechapel Way” (ibid., November 1, 1851, pp. 126ff.), where everything, however disagreeable, is picturesque, and where all is enchanting noise and bustle.

page 191 note 4 Kingsley was extremely active in sanitary reform, and wrote several tracts pointing out the dangers of permitting the lower classes to live in unsanitary houses. See his Miscellanies, 2 vols (London, 1860).

page 191 note 5 Bosanquet, C. B. P., London: Some Account of its Growth, Charitable Agencies and Wants (London, 1868).Google Scholar

page 191 note 6 Jerrold, D., St. Giles and St. James (London, 1851).Google Scholar

page 191 note 7 Sala, G. A., Twice Round the Clock; or, The Hours of the Day and Night in London (London, 1859)Google Scholar; Gaslight and Daylight, with some London Scenes they Shine Upon (London, 1860).

page 191 note 8 J. Greenwood's principal interest and purpose may be gathered from his titles among which are: The Wilds of London (London, 1874), The Seven Curses of London (London, 1869), Unsentimental Journeys; or, Byways of the Modern Babylon (London, 1867), Low Life Deeps; an Account of the Strange Fish to be Found There (London, 1876), Odd People in Odd Places, or the Great Residuum (London, 1883).

page 192 note 1 Chadwick's report sold in great quantities and was widely read. For a critique of it see the introduction to Flinn, M. W., ed., Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, by Chadwick, Edwin. 1842 (Edinburgh, 1965).Google Scholar The Metropolitan Sanitary Commission was appointed to devise ways of combating the cholera epidemic, which appeared in Europe in 1847, and revived memories of the awful visitation of 1832. Under the guidance of Chadwick the Commission painted lurid pictures of the squalor and disease-breeding filth of working class districts.

page 192 note 2 A Brief Inquiry into the Evils attendant upon the Present Method of erecting, purchasing, and renting Dwellings for the Industrial Classes, etc. (London, 1851) pp. 7–8.Google Scholar For a similar statement see Cheney, R.H., “The Missing Link and the London Poor”, in: The Quarterly Review, CCXV (07 1860).Google Scholar Cheney actually described the problem most accurately: “Everywhere the root of the evil is the excess of demand above supply. The philanthropist must never forget that it is more urgent to multiply the dwellings of the poor even than to improve them. Overcrowding would turn a Paradise into a ‘rookery’ and a palace into a ‘den’.” (p. 3) It is interesting to note that Dickens still regarded Whitechapel, Ratcliff, Shadwell, Poplar, Limehouse, and Rotherhithe as terrae incognitae. See Household Words, November 1, 1851, p. 126.

page 193 note 1 See Godwin, G., London Shadows (London, 1854)Google Scholar, Town Swamps and Social Bridges (London, 1859)Google Scholar, and Another Blow for Life (London, 1864).Google Scholar For other critical works see Rev. Beame, T., The Rookeries of London: Past, Present, and Perspective (London, 1851)Google Scholar, and Gavin, H., Sanitary Ramblings (London, 1848).Google Scholar

page 193 note 2 These papers are too numerous to list here but see the Journal of the Statistical Society of London: I (1839), III (1840), VI (1843), XI (1848), XIII (1850), XXXII (1869), XXXVIII (1875).

page 193 note 3 “Report to the Council of the Statistical Society of London from a Committee of its Fellows appointed to make an investigation into the State of the Poorer Classes in St. George in the East”, ibid., XI (August, 1848).

page 193 note 4 Ibid., p. 194.

page 194 note 1 Ibid., pp. 200–201, 208–209.

page 194 note 2 Ibid., pp. 211–212. The size of the room rather than the cost of beds and bedding seems to have kept the number of beds down.

page 194 note 3 Ibid., p. 210.

page 195 note 1 “Report of a Committee of the Council of the Statistical Society of London, consisting of Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Sykes, V.P.R.S., Dr. Guy and F. G. P. Neilson, Esq., to investigate the State of the Inhabitants and their Dwellings in Church Lane, St. Giles's”, Ibid., XI (March, 1848), p. 3.

page 195 note 2 Ibid., p. 5.

page 195 note 3 Ibid., p. 17. The Committee bitterly attacked the system of letting and subletting down to the “sides or corners of the rooms of individuals or families”, which it felt was in “almost universal operation in the houses inspected…” Ibid.

page 196 note 1 For Simon and a brilliant analysis of the public health movement see R. Lambert, Sir John Simon, 1816–1904 (London, 1963).

page 196 note 2 PP, 1857–8, XXIII, “Papers relating to the Sanitary state of the People of England, by E.H. Greenhow, introduction by John Simon”, p. xlviii.

page 196 note 3 Simon, J., Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of London (London, 1854), pp. x, xiv.Google Scholar

page 196 note 4 PP, 1866, XXXIII, p. 421, “Eighth Annual Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, with Appendix 1865”, p. 207. Simon continued: “To children who are born under its curse it must often be a baptism into infamy.” Dr Conway Evans, in his Second Annual Report Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the Strand District (London, 1858), drew up similarly strong charges against overcrowding. Evans worked hard to convince his vestry that sanitary improvements did not consist solely “in works of drainage and water supply”, ibid., p. 80.

page 197 note 1 Simon, J., Second Annual Report to the Hon. the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London (London, 1850), p. 150.Google Scholar Lancet, the journal of the medical profession, circulated outside the profession, and was also most frank. Simon's reports were, of course, reported in the daily papers.

page 197 note 2 Simon, J., Reports Relating to…, pp. 44–45.Google Scholar

page 197 note 3 Simon, J., Second Annual Report…, pp. 148–149.Google Scholar Simon also drew attention to incest. See p. 200, n. 1 below.

page 198 note 1 Simon confidently looked forward to “the systematic publication of facts and to the influence of general opinion as the main agencies of cure”, quoted in Lambert, p. 264.

page 198 note 2 If we take the City Press and Lancet as examples of a newspaper and journal which took a sincere interest in working class housing, we find that the former carried a great deal of material on the subject in 1857, 1861–3, 1875, 1881–5, and almost nothing in the years, 1858–60, 1864–74, 1876–77. Lancet's pages were full of housing reports and investigations into living conditions between 1883–6, but apart from the years 1861, 1866–7, 1870, 1874, 1879 and 1882, it carried little information between 1859 and 1883. Lancet's claim that it had “forestalled the ‘Bitter Cry of Outcast London’ by denouncing the vile dens into which the extreme poor were huddled together”, is in part true; but the reports of its special sanitary commission were never as graphic or as powerful as Mearns’ pamphlet. See Lancet, March 8, 1884, p. 441.

page 198 note 3 In addition to Lambert, see Brand, Jeanne, Doctors and the State. The British Medical Profession and Government Action in Public Health, 1870–1912 (Baltimore, 1965), esp. p. 38.Google Scholar “It was not until the last twenty years of the nineteenth century that the germ theory of disease took hold”, Ibid., p. 37.

page 198 note 4 Lancet (April 19, 1884, p. 719) pointed out that deaths in hospitals often helped to disguise the real mortality figures of a district. Using Clerkenwell as an example it showed that dangerous overcrowding and low death-rates could be found together in one area. The decline in death rate (23.4 deaths per 1,000 in 1851: 20.8 per 1,000 – the lowest of the century – in 1883) was not dramatic, but was a major achievement, given the enormous increase in population.

page 199 note 1 Between 1801 and 1851 the Administrative County of London increased its population from 959, 310 to 2,235,522. By 1881 Greater London had a population of 4,766,661.

page 199 note 2 See Godwin, G., Town Swamps…, pp. 2–3Google Scholar; Hansard, , Vol. CCXXX (1874), p. 455Google Scholar; Royal College of Physicians, Memorial on the Condition of the Dwellings of the Poor in London (London, 1874) p. 1Google Scholar; City Press, February 15, 1862; Buchanan, G., Sanitary Statistics and Proceedings of St. Giles' District (London, 1863), p. 4.Google Scholar See also Dyos, H. J., “Railways and Housing in Victorian London, I”, in: Journal of Transport History, II, No I (05, 1955).Google Scholar For “improvements” see Edwards, P., London Street Improvements (London, 1898).Google Scholar

page 199 note 3 Sometimes, perhaps, more than a fleeting glance: “The payment of sixpence…secures…the privilege of looking from the carriage window into the apartments of all the upper-floor inhabitants between Fenchurch Street and the Station in St. George's-in-the-East;…”, Household Words, November 16, 1850, p. 172.

page 200 note 1 For the insidious development of the slums see Torrens, T.M., “What is to be done with the Slums?”, in: Macmillan's Magazine, XXXIX (04, 1879), pp. 542ff.Google Scholar For bad overcrowding behind respectable façades, see PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC I, p. 12.

page 200 note 2 There is no really good study of the model dwelling companies. Ashworth has some useful information. See also Tarn, J., “The Peabody Donation Fund: The Role of a Housing Society in the Nineteenth Century”, in: Victorian Studies (09, 1966).Google Scholar The largest of the building companies, the Improved Dwellings Co., had by 1880, after seventeen years of building, housed only 25 per cent, of the annual increase in London's population.

page 201 note 1 Ashworth, p. 84.

page 201 note 2 See for example, Building News, April 12, 1872. PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II, p. 412. The evidence concerning the class of tenant the Peabody Trust and the model dwelling companies admitted is somewhat contradictory. See Tarn, passim, and Newsholme, A., “The Vital Statistics of Peabody Buildings and other Artisans' and Labourers' Block Dwellings”, in: Journal of the Statistical Society of London, LIV (03, 1891).Google Scholar Various estimates of earnings of dwellers in the Peabody Estates between 1881 and 1895 range from 23s.5d. to 24s. per week. This would suggest that Peabody tenants were well-paid labourers or poorly paid artisans. At any rate not the very poorest. See PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II, p. 191, PP, 7 (1881), “Select Committee on Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement. II. Report”, p. 126. Newsholme, , Journal of the Statistical Society of London, LIV (03, 1891), p. 90Google Scholar, and Bowmaker, A., Housing of the Working Classes (London, 1898), pp. 123–4.Google Scholar The Improved Industrial Dwellings Co.s' tenants earned family wages of between 35s. and 40s. per week, which puts them in the regularly employed labourer or artisan class. PP, 7 (1881), “Select Committee on Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement”, p. 175.

page 201 note 3 The best biography is: Hill, W., Octavia Hill; Pioneer of the National Trust and Housing Reformer (London, 1956).Google Scholar

page 202 note 1 The Torrens Acts (1868, 1877) were largely concerned with the improvement of single houses: the Cross Acts (1875, 1879) were concerned with larger areas. Both were hampered by their complicated workings, and the costly compensation clauses. Both were more concerned with demolition than with house building.

page 202 note 2 See PP, 7 (1881), “Select Committee on Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement”.

page 202 note 3 Dwellings of the Poor (Report of the Dwellings Committee of the Charity Organisation Society) (London, 1881), p. 1.

page 203 note 1 The Daily Telegraph, in late 1883, also ran a regular column on housing, entitled “Why Should London Wait?”

page 203 note 2 Sims, G., How the Poor Live and Horrible London (London, 1898)Google Scholar, preface.

page 203 note 3 Illustrated London News, November 17, 1883.

page 203 note 4 Sims, p. 3.

page 203 note 5 Ibid., pp. 45–6.

page 203 note 6 Ibid., pp. 12, 13.

page 204 note 1 Sims, p. 107.

page 204 note 2 Ibid., p. 3.

page 204 note 3 Ibid. Sims was never very concrete in his demands. He called in general for stronger legislation and stronger government action, but he did not specify in which direction.

page 204 note 4 See for example, City Press, May 13, 1885.

page 204 note 5 Sims, How The Poor Live and Horrible London, preface.

page 204 note 6 Ibid., p. 103.

page 204 note 7 This point is made by both Inglis, pp. 68, 69, and by Pimlott, J. A. R., Hall, Toynbee. Fifty Years of Social Progress, 1884–1934 (London, 1935).Google Scholar

page 205 note 1 See Inglis, p. 67, n. 1. Pimlott attributed the work to W. Preston, as did others. Mearns told the Royal Commission that he was the author, and claimed in the pages of the Daily News and Contemporary Review (December 1, 1883), p. 933, to have written The Bitter Cry. He was solely responsible for the final editing and revision of the pamphlet. For the dispute between Mearns and Preston, who wrote much of the original draft, see Daily News, April 8, 10, 12 and 15, 1884.

page 205 note 2 There were exceptions. Bishop Blomfield, Bishop of London had taken an interest in early sanitary reform. See also Rev. Girdlestone, C., Letters on the Unhealthy Condition of the Lower Class of Dwellings, especially in Large Towns (London, 1845).Google Scholar Cardinal Manning took an active interest in housing reform.

page 205 note 3 Inglis, p. 69.

page 205 note 4 “The Bitter Cry” and “Outcast London” provided many newspapers and journals with headings for leaders; see for example The Malthusian, No 57 (December, 1883), and Reynolds Newspaper, December 2, 1883. Among the contemporary pamphlets and articles which incorporated Mearns' title were: The Rev. Carruthers, C., The Root of the Matter; or the Only Cure for the Bitter Cry of Outcast London and other Similar Evils of the Present Day (London, 1884)Google Scholar, Crozier, F., Methodism and ‘The Bitter Cry of Outcast London’ (London, 1885)Google Scholar, The Rev. Long, J., The Hopeful Cry of Outcast London (London, 1884)Google Scholar, MacCree, G., Sweet Herbs for the Bitter Cry or Remedies for Horrible and Outcast London (London, 1884)Google Scholar, the Rev. Smiley, F., The Evangelization of a Great City or the Churches' Answer to the Bitter Cry of Outcast London (Philadelphia, 1890)Google Scholar, Rev. Barnett, S., “The Remedy for Outcast London”, in: Daily News, December 6, 1883, Countess Tankerville, A Bright Spot in Outcast London (London, 1884)Google Scholar, Down in the Depths of Outcast London: Being Facts Not Recorded in the ‘Bitter Cry’ (1884). The title was used by one medical officer to give greater force to the heading of his annual report. See Lancet, February 2, 1884, p. 213. For “The Housing of Outcast Liverpool”, see Pall Mall Gazette (November 7, 1883), and for “The Rehousing of Outcast Glasgow”, Ibid. (November 28, 1883).

page 206 note 1 The Bitter Cry of Outcast London (London, 1883), p. 2.Google Scholar

page 206 note 2 Ibid. For a similar connection between lack of religious belief and the slum environment see Rivington, p. 17.

page 206 note 3 The Bitter Cry, p. 4.

page 206 note 4 Ibid.

page 206 note 5 Do-gooders like Octavia Hill were always insisting upon fresh air in the houses of the poor. They failed to realise that the frail, undernourished bodies of the poor could not withstand fresh streams of cool air, and however foetid the atmosphere the inhabitants of the slums rarely opened their windows.

page 206 note 6 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

page 207 note 1 Ibid., p. 5.

page 207 note 2 Ibid., pp. 9ff. Eventually in 1888 a select committee of the House of Lords was appointed to investigate the sweating trades.

page 207 note 3 In addition to the medical officers, and members of the Statistical Society of London, mentioned above, Lord Shaftesbury and Dr Southwood Smith also clearly saw, and wrote about, the connection between overcrowding and immorality.

page 207 note 4 Ibid., pp. 2–3. Sims had hinted at “nameless abominations which could only be set forth were we contributing to the Lancet,…”, Sims, p. 45.

page 208 note 1 Both Sims and Mearns regarded drink as almost a necessity to endure life in the slums. For marriage as the exception rather than the norm among people living together see Greenwood, The Seven Curses of London, pp. 15–16, and Mearns (quoting Sims), Bitter Cry, p. 7.

page 208 note 2 Ibid. This reference to incest is the only one I have been able to find in housing reform literature up to that time. But here, as in other aspects of housing reform, the remark of the Medical Press Circular, in November, 1875–“We cannnot fail to draw the conclusion that medicine…is, at present, and is likely to remain for some time to come, far in advance of public opinion and support”–has special application. Sir John Simon, according to his latest biographer, often played upon “Victorian prudery in an effort to shock his readers into sympathy”. (Lambert, p. 15). In his Second Annual Report as Medical Officer to the City, Simon stated that overcrowding made the habits of the slum dwellers “ruffianly and incestuous” (Simon, Reports Relating to…. p. 150). Lancet (February 22, 1868, p. 265) reported a meeting of the Health Officers' Association in which it was declared that overcrowding had increased to a point where “sex and consanguinity count for nothing”. See also Ibid., August 4, 1883, p. 187.

page 208 note 3 The Bitter Cry, p. 14, p. 20. Mearns offered more definite suggestions in a paper he read at a meeting on June 4, 1884. He wanted legislation governing, and inspection of, all property let in single rooms. Pall Mall Gazette, June 5, 1884.

page 209 note 1 See for example Vanderkiste's, R. W.Notes and Narratives of a Six Years' Mission, principally among the Dens of London (London, 1854).Google Scholar See also the tract written the year after Mearns' by F. Crozier. Both Vanderkiste and Crozier's experiences in the slums led them to call for more bibles rather than more houses.

page 209 note 2 In this Mearns was following Greenwood, Sims and Simon.

page 209 note 3 See p. 225, n. 2 below.

page 209 note 4 Lancet, December 15, 1883, p. 1050.

page 209 note 5 This must be measured in its impact rather than in the numbers sold, although a contemporary did claim that it “sold by millions” (Rogers, F., Labour, Life and Literature – Some Memories of Sixty Years (London, 1913), p. 102.Google Scholar It passed through several editions.

page 210 note 1 Inglis, p. 61.

page 210 note 2 For Stead, see Whyte, F., The Life of W.T. Stead (London, 1925).Google Scholar

page 210 note 3 Lynd, p. 368.

page 210 note 4 Ibid.

page 210 note 5 Pall Mall Gazette, October 16, 1883. Stead described working class housing as “the one great domestic problem which the religion, the humanity, and the statesmanship of England are imperatively summoned to solve”.

page 210 note 6 Ibid., October 22, 1883.

page 211 note 1 Ibid. The paper later carried a series of front page articles entitled “The Dwellings of the Poor”. Octavia Hill, Shaftesbury, and C. S. Loch (of the Charity Organisation Society) were among the contributors.

page 210 note 2 Solly Collection of Manuscripts, London School of Economics, Vol. IV, Section 4(a), item 3.

page 210 note 3 The Times, November 26, 1883.

page 210 note 4 See the sad comment of J. Greenwood, The Wilds of London, preface.

page 210 note 5 See Lynd, passim and Ausubel, H., In Hard Times (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

page 212 note 1 For George's impact upon England see Lynd, pp. 141ff. One contemporary observed that George, though not a socialist himself, had done more “than any other single person to stir and deepen in this country an agitation which, if not socialist, at least promises to be the mother of socialism”, quoted in Ibid., p. 143. See also the Pall Mall Gazette, November 20, 1883.

page 212 note 2 Pall Mall Gazette, October 12, 1883; Ibid., November 1, 1883.

page 212 note 3 The Times, September 5, 1883.

page 212 note 4 See “The Radical Programme III – ‘The Housing of the Poor in Towns’”, in: Fortnightly Review, XLIX (10, 1883)Google Scholar; J. Chamberlain, “Labourers' and Artizans' Dwellings”, ibid. (December, 1883).

page 213 note 1 The Daily News, October 19, 1883.

page 213 note 2 Webb, Beatrice, My Apprenticeship (London, 1926), pp. 179–80.Google Scholar

page 213 note 3 MacCallum, Hugh, The Distribution of the Poor in London (London, 1883)Google Scholar; Lambert, Brooke, “The Outcast Poor. 1. – Esau's Cry”, in: Contemporary Review, XLIX (12, 1883).Google Scholar Part Two – “Outcast London” – was written by Mearns.

page 214 note 1 Pall Mall Gazette, March 12, 1884. Compton later assisted housing reform by his distinguished service on the London County Council.

page 214 note 2 Austin, Alfred, “Rich Men's Dwellings”, in: National Review, No X (12, 1883)Google Scholar, and Ibid., No XI (January, 1884), pp. 755–6.

page 214 note 3 Daily News, November 30, 1883; Ibid., December 6, 1883.

page 214 note 4 One clergyman called slumming a “West End fad” (Pall Mall Gazette, April 3, 1884). On December 7, 1883, the Pall Mall Gazette wrote “Since we directed public attention to the ‘Bitter Cry of Outcast London’ it has become fashionable to make a pilgrimage to the slums”, and it added, “A show slum is quite in demand in many circles, but the worst slums are avoided by all but official pilgrims”. For similar statements see Adderley, J.,… In Slums and Society (London, 1916), p. 170Google Scholar, and Sims, G., My Life. Sixty Years'; Recollections of Bohemian London (London, 1917), p. 136.Google Scholar

page 215 note 1 See the Punch cartoon, December 22, 1883, p. 294.

page 215 note 2 MacCallum, p. 7.

page 215 note 3 Pimlott, p. 24. See Inglis, p. 37.

page 215 note 4 Quoted in Pimlott, pp. 29–30.

page 216 note 1 Ibid., p. 33. Before The Bitter Cry Barnett and others had raised the problem of the large towns up at Oxford.

page 216 note 2 Quoted in Ibid., p. 30. The Spectator considered that the settlement movement had its origins in the period when the appearance of The Bitter Cry gave rise to a “spasm of public emotion”. Quoted in Ibid., p. 40. See also Inglis, p. 149.

page 216 note 3 Adderley, pp. 16–17.

page 216 note 4 Rev. Samuel Barnett, quoted in Pimlott, p. 1. Though this sense of sin was not entirely confined to religious sentiment, Ausubel is correct to state that “The biggest single influence that made people reformers in the late Victorian period was still religion”. Ausubel, p. 67.

page 217 note 1 See Inglis' perceptive and penetrating study.

page 217 note 2 Lord Shaftesbury considered that “there can be no security at home, no honour, no prosperity, no dignity at home, no nobleness of attitude towards foreign nations, unless the strength of the people rests upon the purity and firmness of the domestic system”, and he asked “If you have one, two or three families in the room, what can there be of the purity of domestic life?” Quoted in Potter, G., “The First Point of the New Chapter: Improved Dwellings for the People”, in: Contemporary Review, XVIII (11, 1871), pp. 555–6.Google Scholar See also the City Press, September 12, 1857 for fear that the working man's dwelling was devoid of the “comfort, rest, peace, love, holiness” that “home” represented.

page 217 note 3 London Quarterly Review, January 1884, p. 322.

page 218 note 1 Pall Mall Gazette, November 7, 1883.

page 218 note 2 Inglis, p. 68.

page 218 note 3 Quoted in Ibid., p. 68.

page 218 note 4 Ibid.

page 218 note 5 Wearmouth, R. F., Methodism and the Struggle of the Working Classes, 1850–1900 (Leicester, 1954), p. 150.Google Scholar See also pp. 155, 156.

page 218 note 6 Pall Mall Gazette, November 6, 1883.

page 218 note 7 Daily News, November 29, 1883.

page 219 note 1 Ibid., November 22, 1883, November 27, 1883, November 30, 1883, December 5, 1883, December 10, 1883, December 11, 1883.

page 219 note 2 For the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes' fiery reaction to The Bitter Cry see Daily News, April 4, 1884. See also: Rev. J. Edmund Long, Forster Crozier, Rev. C. Carruthers, pp. 205f., n. 4 above.

page 219 note 3 PP. 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II, p. 298.

page 220 note 1 Pall Mall Gazette, November 22, 1883.

page 220 note 2 Inglis, p. 197.

page 220 note 3 Quoted in Ibid., p. 195.

page 220 note 4 Ibid., p. 203.

page 220 note 5 Quoted in Ibid., pp. 296, 259.

page 220 note 6 The Rev. Charles Girdlestone, passim.

page 221 note 1 Pall Mall Gazette, October 17, 1883.

page 221 note 2 Haw, G., Christianity and the Working Classes (London, 1906), pp. 17–18.Google Scholar See also Inglis, p. 151. Novels dealing with the lives of clergymen in the slums, such as Mrs Humphrey Ward's Robert Elsmere (London, 1888) and Adderley's Stephen Remarx (London, 1893) were immensely popular.

page 221 note 3 “I should not like the impression to be that ‘common’ meant very frequent”, he explained, “You do meet with it [incest] and frequently meet with it, but not very frequently.” PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II, p. 177. See also the evidence of the Rev. A.T. Fryer, Rev. Robert C. Billings, Rev. George Smith and others, Ibid., pp. 65, 79, 85, 87, 95, 106, 121, 164, 191.

page 221 note 4 Ibid., p. 7.

page 222 note 1 Pall Mall Gazette, March 5, 1884. For similar statements see Rivington, appendix.

page 222 note 2 See Household Words, May 25, 1850, p. 199; Kingsley, C., “Great Cities and their Influence for Good and Evil”, Miscellanies, Vol. II (London, 1860), p. 342Google Scholar; Potter, p. 556, and Sims, How the Poor Live…, p. 44. Ruth Glass makes the excellent point that the Victorian town was “the barracks of a vast working class whose lessons in the power of combination had also begun, and whose sporadic riots were portents of latent insurrection”, p. 16.

page 223 note 1 Daily News, November 29, 1883.

page 223 note 2 Fortnightly Review, XLIX (October, 1883), p. 596. The author was the infamous Frank Harris.

page 223 note 3 Brooke Lambert, p. 916; “London Landowners, London Improvements, and the Housing of the Poor”, in: Macmillan's Magazine, pp. 8–9; Daily News, October 19, 1883; Punch, November 10, 1883, p. 225. (This was the same issue which carried the cartoon, directly occasioned by The Bitter Cry, entitled “Mammon's Rents”.) See also Lancet, December 1, 1883, p. 1050.

page 224 note 1 Punch, December 8, 1883, p. 270.

page 224 note 2 Saturday Review, October 27, 1883, p. 522.

page 224 note 3 Fear that Irish violence would spread to England was widespread at that time. The monster meetings in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square in 1886 and 1887 soon confirmed the worst fears.

page 224 note 4 PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II, p. 178.

page 224 note 5 Brabazon, Lord, “The Decay of Bodily Strength in Towns”, in: Nineteenth Century, XXI (05, 1887), p. 674.Google Scholar Fear of the effect of physical deterioration upon the strength of the nation reached a climax in the investigations of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (1904).

page 225 note 1 Lord Brabazon, Ibid., p. 676. For the attitude of the Malthusian League, see the Malthusian, No 4, May, 1879, and No 57, December, 1883. The President of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain struck a Darwinian theme frequently heard when he stated that “In the great struggle of nations the best won, because goodness was the association of strength and healthfulness” (The Times, September 26, 1883). Brabazon's inclusion of “employers and capitalists” is most interesting. Protectionists tried to suggest that housing reforms were dependent upon the adoption of protection, which alone could boost wages (see, for example, Daily News, November 14, 1883). The author of “The Housing of the Poor in Towns” contended that “It is in the interest of all in the community that the workman should become a better instrument of production…” (Fortnightly Review, XLIX, p. 596). For an interesting observation on the connection between social reform and the fear of foreign militarism and economic competition, see McGregor, O., “Social Research and Social Policy in the Nineteenth Century”, in: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. VIII, No 2 (06, 1957).Google Scholar

page 225 note 2 The Times, November 28, 1883; Punch, December 15, 1883, p. 285; the Rev. Barnett, Samuel, “Sensationalism and Social Reform”, in: Nineteenth Century, XIX (02, 1886), p. 282Google Scholar; the City Press, May 13,1885; Bosanquet, H., Social Work in London, 1869–1912 (London, 1914), pp. 74–5Google Scholar; Lancet, December 15, 1883; Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1889 (it attacked the “scores of would-be Zolas. A good many of them…sang for lucre and self-advertisement.”).

page 226 note 1 Lambert, p. 264.

page 226 note 2 Daily News, November 29, 1883.

page 226 note 3 Illustrated London News, November 3, 1883, p. 418.

page 226 note 4 Ibid., December 15, 1883, p. 571.

page 226 note 5 “Dwellings of the Poor”, in: Quarterly Review, CLVII (January, 1884), p. 148.

page 227 note 1 For Booth see T.S., and Simney, S.M.B., Booth, Charles. Social Scientist (London, 1960).Google Scholar See also Glass, who states, “The Booth group spent their emotion far more in collecting facts and producing representative evidence, than in dismay at the sight of the facts themselves”, p. 9.

page 227 note 2 For the inquiries of the 1880s see Lynd, passim. Particularly important was the royal commission on agricultural depression and the select committee on sweating. The former suggested to many that urban problems would be solved only when the agricultural labourer stayed on the land. The latter pointed up the wretched condition of working class dwellings.

page 227 note 3 Austin, p. 463; Lancet, February 2, 1884, p. 209.

page 228 note 1 T.S. and S.M.B. Simney, pp. 65ff.

page 228 note 2 Quoted in Whyte, I, p. 105. Not surprisingly Sims regarded the agitation of 1883–4 to be responsible for the appointment of the Commission. Daily News, March 13, 1884. For other pressures put upon the government to appoint a commission see, The Times, January 26, 1884, Illustrated London News, November 3, 1883.

page 228 note 3 Hansard, 3rd Series, CCLXXXI (1883), p. 52.

page 228 note 4 Ibid., 3rd Series, CCLXXXIV (1884), p. 1680.

page 228 note 5 Ibid., 3rd Series, CCLXXXIV (1884), p. 1704.

page 229 note 1 Ibid. The Daily News announced on February 9 that there would be a royal commission on housing; on the 15th it wrote that Dilke would serve as Chairman, and four days later it listed some of the members.

page 229 note 2 Roy Jenkins, Sir Charles Dilke (London, 1950), p. 173; Pall Mall Gazette, July 9, 1889. The Prince of Wales conducted his own investigation of the worst parts of St. Pancras and Holborn, and later, Soho. Ibid., February 19, 1884; July 9, 1884.

page 229 note 3 Dilke Papers, Vol. II, 43, 875, entry 145.

page 229 note 4 Longford, Elizabeth, Victoria, Queen. Born to Succeed (New York, 1964), pp. 462–3.Google Scholar

page 229 note 5 Lancet, January 26, 1884.

page 230 note 1 Illustrated London News, December 15, 1883.

page 230 note 2 The Times, November 16, 1883.

page 230 note 3 Daily News, December 12, 1883.

page 230 note 4 Punch, December 1, 1883, p. 259. See also Illustrated London News, November 24, 1883; and Lancet, November 17, 1883, p. 872. Obviously Dilke's personal inquiries were unusual for a President of the Local Government Board.

page 230 note 5 Punch, December 1, 1883, p. 258.

page 231 note 1 Lancet, March 1, 1884, p. 404. See also Jenkins, pp. 174–6. Many newspapers agitated for the inclusion of Octavia Hill on the commission, but like Lord Shaftesbury, the doctors, and school visitors, she proved more valuable as a witness.

page 231 note 2 The First Report was devoted to England and Wales, the other Reports to Ireland and Scotland.

page 232 note 1 There was actually a parliamentary definition of “working class”. “The expression ‘working class’ included mechanics, artizans, labourers, and others working for wages, hawkers, coster mongers, persons not working for wages but working at some trade or handicraft without employing others except members of their own families, and persons, other than domestic servants, whose income in any case does not exceed an average of thirty shillings a week; and the families of any such persons who may be residing with them.” Quoted in Spensley, J. Calvert, “Urban Housing Problems”, in: Journal of the Statistical Society of London, LXXI, Part II (03, 1918), p. 175.Google Scholar

page 232 note 2 PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC I, p. 20. See also below, pp. 238f.

page 232 note 3 Ibid., p. 11.

page 232 note 4 See for example Reynolds Newspaper, May 17, 1885. Reynolds Newspaper wanted municipal buildings, let at cost, and felt, like many others, that the root of the solution lay in agrarian reforms which would keep people on the land and out of large cities. Lancet (May 23,1885, p. 953) was disappointed in the Report.

page 233 note 1 Pall Mall Gazette, May 8, 1885. This was a leader, entitled, “An Epoch making Report”.

page 233 note 2 Only the City, within the metropolis, had used the Shaftesbury Acts to build model dwellings. The vestries were notoriously apathetic to housing needs, and the move towards the central authority was designed to make the Shaftesbury Acts meaningful.

page 233 note 3 The central authority, the Metropolitan Board of Works, did not have power, under the Torrens and Cross Acts, to build and maintain working class dwellings on the land they cleared. Usually the site was sold, below commercial value, and often after years of negotiations, to a model dwelling company. It is significant that the memorandum added to the First Report by Collings, requesting that power be given to local authorities to purchase and maintain land and dwellings, was signed by one half of the Commission.

page 233 note 4 Pall Mall Gazette, May 8, 1885.

page 233 note 5 See n. 3 above.

page 233 note 6 53 & 54, Vic. c. 70.

page 234 note 1 Hansard, IV Series, Vol. III (1909), p. 850.

page 234 note 2 The Times, May 8, 1885.

page 234 note 3 For the mobility of labour see Bosanquet, H., “People and Homes” in: Economic Journal, X (03, 1900)Google Scholar, and the Pall Mall Gazette, March 12, 1884. It is interesting to note that Bosanquet set out to deny the lack of rooms for the poor, but in her article she substantiated the great degree of overcrowding.

page 234 note 4 For statistics of empty houses see Howarth, E.G. and Wilson, M. (eds), West Ham, A Study in Social and Industrial Problems, being the Report of the Outer London Inquiry Committee (London, 1907)Google Scholar, passim. See also the numerous tables of house accommodation, including unoccupied houses, in LCC, London Statistics.

page 235 note 1 For the building process in the suburbs, see Dyos, H.J., Suburb, Victorian. A Study of the Growth of Camberwell (Leicester, 1961).Google Scholar West Ham, for example, had 9.27 per cent, of its population living in overcrowded rooms, yet in 1905 had over 47,000 empty houses (Howarth and Wilson, p. 24). Houses built in Willesden, Hammersmith and Battersea remained unoccupied for want of cheap workmen's trains. See Pollins, H., “Transport Lines and Social Divisions”, in: Glass, R. et al. , eds, London. Aspects of Change (Centre for Urban Studies: London, 1964), p. 43.Google Scholar

page 235 note 2 The Birmingham Corporation, for example, quoted empty house statistics after its great slum clearance scheme to suggest that it had satisfactorily re-housed the evicted, which was far from the case. For the distance from work many workmen could contemplate living, see E. J. Hobsbawm, “The Nineteenth Century London Labour Market”, ibid. Hobsbawm concludes that many workmen were tied to a walking distance – three or four miles at most – from their work places.

page 235 note 3 London County Council, London Statistics, XII (1901–1902), table B, p. x.Google Scholar

page 235 note 4 See Ibid., and ibid., XXIV (1913–1914), p. III These figures use the LCC reckoning of overcrowding as more than two to a room. These figures should be compared to Sherwell, A., Life in West London (London, 1897), pp. 29–30.Google Scholar Sherwell gives the following percentages to total population overcrowded in 1894: Whitechapel (54), St. George-in-the-East (55), Clerkenwell (54), Shoreditch (49) and St. George-the-Martyr (49).

page 236 note 1 London County Council, London Statistics, XII (1901–1902), table 11, p. 117.Google Scholar

page 236 note 2 See Spensley, p. 210, and Mitchell, B. R., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (London, 1962), p. 240.Google Scholar

page 236 note 3 PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II, p. 401. These were occupants of the Peabody Buildings in 1865.

page 236 note 4 Booth, Charles (ed.), Life and Labour of the People of London, Vol. I, Poverty (London, 1902), Pt I, p. 33.Google Scholar See also p. 201, n. 2 above. In addition, a close check was kept in the model dwellings on letting and sub-letting: this discouraged many working men.

page 237 note 1 For comparative costs of rents in the centre of London and the suburbs (taking into account the cost of workmen's trains) see London County Council, London Statistics, XI (1900–1901), pp. 384ff. For rather different conclusions see Spensley, p. 195.

page 237 note 2 Distance from work, cost of shopping in the suburbs compared to the large markets of central London, the inability of wives to work in the suburbs, were all deterrents. See PP, 7 (1882), “Select Committee on Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings”, II, pp. 82, 85; Hansard, third series, Vol. CLXXIX (1864), pp. 1492–3.

page 237 note 3 There are numerous statistics of house building in the nineteenth century but no accurate figures for working class houses. The annual census did not break down the figures of house building into working class and other houses. See Mitchell, p. 239; Saul, S.B., “House Building in England, 1890–1891. A Statistical Note”, in: Economic History Review, 2nd Series, XV, No 1 (08, 1962)Google Scholar; Habakkuk, H. J., “Fluctuations in House-Building in Britain and the United States in the Nineteenth Century”, in: Journal of Economic History, XXII, No 2 (06, 1962).Google Scholar There are some figures for working class housing, but they should be used cautiously. See, for example, London County Council, Housing Development and Workmen's Fares (London, 1913), Appendix 2, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

page 237 note 4 London County Council, London Statistics, XII (1901–1902), p. x.Google Scholar

page 237 note 5 See Dyos, H.J., “Railways and Housing in Victorian London, I”, in: Journal of Transport History, II, No 1 (05, 1955).Google Scholar See also The Report of the Dwellings Committee of the Charity Organisation Society (London, 1874).Google Scholar

page 238 note 1 Mitchell, p. 344.

page 238 note 2 Tucker, Rufus, “Real Wages of Artisans in London, 1729–1935”, in: Journal of the American Statistical Association, XXXI (03, 1936), p. 80.Google Scholar This figure of 82 for 1883 should be compared to 67.2 (1873), 56.5 (1863) and 56.7 (1853).

page 238 note 3 It is interesting in this context to note that Dyos defines a slum as representing “the presence of a market for local casual labour”. Victorian Studies, XI, No 1, (09, 1967), p. 34.Google Scholar

page 238 note 4 Booth, Charles, Life and Labour… Vol. II. Poverty, pp. 25, 26, 29.Google Scholar

page 238 note 5 Tucker and Mitchell disagree somewhat, but the overall picture of steady or declining retail prices is clear.

page 238 note 6 PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II, p. 77.

page 239 note 1 Ibid., RCHWC I, p. 21, Spensley, p. 195. Of course there were thousands of casually employed labourers who managed to find cheaper accommodation in rooms in cellars and in sub-standard houses for 2/6d. or 3/- per week. Dwellings in the East End tended to be cheaper than in other working class districts. Unfortunately building codes and sanitation acts tended to push up rents.

page 239 note 2 Pall Mall Gazette, February 5, 1884.

page 239 note 3 Sherwell, p. 112. Later the same family, when the head of the household was out of work, cut its weekly budget to 8s.9½d.

page 240 note 1 Quoted in the Pall Mall Gazette, March 5, 1884.

page 240 note 2 Torrens, p. 542.

page 240 note 3 PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II, p. 2.

page 240 note 4 Pall Mall Gazette, February 19, 1884.

page 241 note 1 Simon, J., English Sanitary Institutions (London, 1890), p. 444.Google Scholar

page 241 note 2 Ibid., p. 434. The Times (November 26, 1883) considered that “the housing of the great mass of workers in London, is a question, we say, of wages….”

page 242 note 1 Hansard, 3rd Series, CCLXXXIV (1884), p. 1681, and ibid., 3rd Series, CCXCIX (1885), p. 891. I discuss the role of Salisbury at greater length in the introduction to a reprint of The Bitter Cry and other housing tracts, to be published by Leicester University Press next year.

page 242 note 2 Hansard, 3rd Series, CCLXXXIV (1884), p. 1687.

page 242 note 3 Ibid., 3rd Series, CCXCIX (1885), p. 891.

page 242 note 4 Salisbury, Lord, “Labourers' and Artisans' Dwellings”, in: National Review, II (11, 1883).Google Scholar Salisbury had made several speeches on working class housing conditions before The Bitter Cry appeared, and his National Review article was probably planned before Mearns' pamphlet came out. In his article Salisbury advocated government loans at low rate of interest to builders of workmen's lodgings – not a radical suggestion, but one which, at the time, led to great fear among conservative elements that their leader was deserting the market economy and flirting with socialism. For the reaction to Salisbury‘s article, see Pall Mall Gazette, October 25, 1883.

page 242 note 5 Hansard, 3rd Series, Vol. CCLXXXIV (1884), p. 1689.

page 242 note 6 The Fabians and the Democratic Federation placed housing high on their list of reforms, although they did not start campaigning energetically for reform until after 1883.

page 242 note 7 Actually the Commission was far from agreed that the 1885 Act stemmed from their recommendations. Both Stanley and Broadhurst disliked the Act. Ibid., 3rd Series, CCXCIX (1885), pp. 1593, 1607.

page 243 note 1 Ibid., 3rd Series, CCC (1885), pp. 651–654.

page 243 note 2 But only in part. He seems to have been genuinely concerned with urban conditions, and there is little substance in the charge of Chamberlain and other critics that he was merely posing as the champion of Tory Democracy and trying to “dish” the Whigs.

page 243 note 3 For the League's views see Ibid., 3rd Series, CCLXXXIV (1884), pp. 170ff.

page 243 note 4 Ibid., p. 1703. Wemyss was quoting from H. Fawcett's, State Socialism and the Nationalisation of Land (London, 1883). Fawcett voiced the opinion that there was the world of difference between state interference in strictly sanitary and health matters, and state interference in house building. The arguments used by opponents of municipal housing may be summarized: it would discourage private builders; it would destroy self-reliance and “character”; it would attract people into the towns and thus aggravate the problem; it would lead to socialism.

page 243 note 5 Lord Shaftesbury, “The Mischief of State Aid”, in Hill, O. et al. , “Common Sense and the Dwellings of the Poor”, in: Nineteenth Century, XIV (12, 1883), p. 934.Google Scholar

page 244 note 1 Saturday Review, October 27, 1883, p. 521.

page 244 note 2 Haw, G., The Englishman's Castle (London, 1906), pp. 48–9.Google Scholar See also Pall Mall Gazette, October 17, 1883.

page 244 note 3 PP, 30 (1884–5), RCHWC II, p. 475.

page 244 note 4 Daily News, October 27, 1883.

page 244 note 5 Lancet, December 15, 1883.

page 244 note 6 Ibid., November 17, 1883.

page 244 note 7 The Times, January 9, 1884.

page 245 note 1 Lancet, May 23, 1885. See also the reaction of the Economist, quoted in Lynd pp. 149–150, and the Daily News, December 10, 1883.